Drama. Starring
Maria Schrader
and
Juliane Kohler
. Directed by
Max Farberbock
. In German with English subtitles. (Not rated. 125 minutes. At the Castro.)
A sense of reckless abandon fuels "Aimee & Jaguar," a lustrously shot, well-acted and immensely moving romantic drama set in World War II Berlin. These Germans are still partying as if it's the Weimar era: The bombs are falling, the Gestapo is everywhere and the clothes are fabulous. But it's a freedom born of desperation and fear, an antidote to the everyday horrors of war.

Out of this party-amid-the-rubble spirit springs an unlikely -- and beautifully portrayed -- lesbian romance between a Jewish member of the underground and the wife of a German soldier.

Maria Schrader plays Felice, a defiant Jewish beauty who gets a charge out of tense black-market transactions. The charismatic but troubled Felice is irresistible to women and men. She's the Angelina Jolie character.

Felice, really just out of sport, sets out to seduce Lilly Wust (Juliane Kohler), a married mother of four. Of course, she gets more than she bargained for. Her attentions tap the great emotional and sexual reserves of the unhappy homemaker, who isn't about to let her libertine lover off the hook.

The war eventually becomes just a backdrop for the intensifying romance. In fact, the love story is such an old-style melodrama that it could have been made in the '40s -- were it not for its strong sexuality and honest portrayal of a lesbian relationship.

Both actresses bring increasing depth to their characters as the story unfolds. Schrader conveys the vulnerability beneath Felice's devil- may-care seducer, and Kohler, who resembles Mia Farrow, shows the steel in the long-neglected hausfrau. The real Wust, on whose story this film is based, is 86 and still lives in Berlin. -- Advisory: This film contains nudity, explicit sex and violence. -- Carla Meyer

The nuances of the beautiful new Italian film "Not of This World" might be lost on some. But this is a heartrending comedy-drama of luminous humanity, tracing the story of a young Milanese nun suddenly stuck with an abandoned baby.

"Not of This World" is such a gentle surprise, it's a wonder it opens at only one theater in the Bay Area -- the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. It's for anybody who thinks recent films have neglected concerns of the heart.

Sister Caterina (Margherita Buy), plain but pretty, is about to take her final vows in her convent in Milan. She dreams of missionary work in a far-off land, but an older, wiser nun tells her that life's real tests are found in the familiar and the everyday. Caterina is shocked one day when a disheveled man runs up to her in a park and hands her a newborn. She takes the infant to a hospital but remains concerned -- she feels she must find his mother. So she embarks on a search, discovering her own maternal impulses and putting them to a test that has soulful reverberations.

The nun becomes an investigator, in a sense, searching through a bustling, impersonal world for the real mother. She's filled with dread about the fate of the child, and she wrestles with a sense of moral indignation that anyone would abandon him.

On her search, Caterina discovers Ernesto (Silvio Orlando), a dour, middle-aged shop owner whose permanent state of loneliness has touched his eyes with sadness. But his heart races to think that maybe, just maybe, he is the baby's father.

The beauty of this film lies in how writer-director Giuseppe Piccioni's characters, while remaining entirely in the everyday world, discover and reveal their extraordinary humanity, not as earthshaking drama but as small, steady fires that ignite their hearts and make their lives bearable. -- Advisory: This film contains contains mild sex, adult themes. -- Peter Stack

We're so used to seeing Christopher Walken playing weird guys that it's a treat to see him as a somewhat regular Joe in his new film, "The Opportunists," a low-budget independent by first-time feature director Myles Connell. Walken's portrait of a stubborn ex-con safecracker, Vic Kelly, trying to mend his life and save what's left of his family is the reason to see this plain-as-day but gritty crime drama.

Kelly is trying desperately to make ends meet and take care of a resentful daughter and invalid aunt. He operates a failing auto-repair business in the blue-collar Sunnyside district of Queens, N.Y. The last thing he wants is to return to a life of crime, which he knows is a loser's game.

But things are so grim for Vic that when a chance comes along to pull off a surefire job with a couple of dunces in his Irish American community, he can't say no. He's got his daughter and his aunt to consider, along with his girlfriend (Cyndi Lauper), who is struggling to keep her tavern afloat.

Vic is coaxed back into crime by a fast-talking immigrant, Michael (Peter McDonald), who claims that he's a cousin just arrived from Ireland. Their plan to burglarize a cash- filled safe can't go wrong.

Walken hardly raises his voice in this film, but he's got tension under the skin and in his eyes. In a brilliant performance, he fleshes out an unsophisticated, indecisive man who, as a safecracker, is so intense that he seems touched by a wondrous madness. -- Advisory: This film contains raw language and violence. -- Peter Stack

In the boxing ring, Lucia Rijker is liquid steel, a dazzling athlete whose nimble moves and fierce punches have made her an undefeated champion.

But Rijker (pronounced "Ry- ker"), who is the subject of the marvelous documentary "Shadow Boxers," is also an anomaly. Articulate, introspective and pretty -- she looks like actress Pam Grier -- Rijker has the charisma and watchability of a born movie star, and, in fact, wants to try acting when she hangs up her gloves.

Directed by Katya Bankowsky, "Shadow Boxers" begins as an overview of female boxing, a sport that claims an estimated 300 professional fighters in the United States. Stylishly edited and photographed, with a strong soundtrack by Argentine hip- hop artist Zoel, the film looks at several fighters but finds its focus with the gifted Rijker.

A former kickboxer who grew up in Amsterdam with a Dutch mother and black immigrant father, Rijker, 32, moved to Los Angeles in 1994. There, she became the first woman signed by top promoter Bob Arum; after her professional debut in 1996, she was undefeated in 13 fights.

Rijker, who practices Buddhist meditation and seems unusually serene and gentle outside the ring, views boxing primarily in psychological terms. "Through fighting," she says, "I'm forced to work through things that would be too scary otherwise."

"Shadow Boxers" could use more background and personal detail on Rijker, but Bankowsky's tight, no- frills approach is always compelling. She treats female prizefighters with respect and takes their viability as athletes as a given. -- Edward Guthmann

The new Hong Kong film "Okinawa Rendez-vous" might as well be the anti-Hong Kong film. A nonchalant and anticlimactic gangster noir, it goes out its way to avoid the slam-bang cliches of the Hong Kong movie, the gunfire barrages and fight choreography.

It even gets out of the city. Set on the Japanese island of its title, "Okinawa Rendez-vous" stars Leslie Cheung as an international thief, Tony Leung Kar-fai as a vacationing police department file clerk from Hong Kong who poses as a cop, and Faye Wong ("Chungking Express") as a mystery woman with bundles of dollars in her duffel bag.

The directing by Gordon Chan ("Beast Cop") is notable for its understatement and lack of stylistic flourishes. In fact, the film may be too laid-back for its own good, sometimes going slack where it should be atmospheric. Some of the characters are Japanese-speaking, some Cantonese and occasionally they use their common language, English. -- Bob Graham

The jam band Phish blends every style under the sun -- bluegrass, classic rock, jazz, disco. One of the top-grossing touring acts in the country, the 16-year-old group remains all but unknown to the typical pop music fan.

But like the Deadheads before them, Phish fans will travel far and wide to see their heroes perform. "They're coming because they don't really know what's going to happen," says the affable singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio, "just like we don't really know what's going to happen."

This oddball "rockumentary" isn't exactly a flattering portrait of the band, though fans will enjoy seeing the players prove themselves to be such regular guys. The director is Todd Phillips, the young filmmaker responsible for this summer's Tom Green gag vehicle, "Road Trip," and the 1998 Sundance-award-winning hazing expose, "Frat House."

Perhaps inadvertently, those two movies lend plenty of context to the Phish philm. Comic zaniness ensues as the band tours Europe and mounts an enormous festival in Maine, "The Great Went," which drew 70,000 over a long weekend.

The band -- most notably the New Jersey native Anastasio, who talks enough for all four members -- is presented as a ragtag group of lovable dorks. Trying to describe the thrill of performing, Anastasio refers to Arnold Schwarzenegger's spiel in "Pumping Iron" about the orgasmic sensation of weightlifting. It's a howl.

Several scenes of the band members goofing around in rehearsal or stumbling through uninspired sets won't help make a case for their musical immortality. But Anastasio defends their right to fall on their faces: "If you're gonna take a risk, sometimes you're gonna play s--." And there are just enough revelatory moments to recommend the movie. -- Advisory: This film contains nudity and raw language. James Sullivan

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